Italian Fever

by Valerie Martin

  Chapter 9

  WHEN LUCY OPENED her eyes again, a man she did not recognize was leaning over her. At once he began speaking in rapid Italian. Behind him, another man, his back to Lucy, stood shouting into a cellular telephone. It was Massimo. The strange man kept talking. Lucy closed her eyes, which was as effective as turning a radio dial; the man stopped talking. She tried to make out what Massimo was saying, but it was like trying to isolate a teaspoonful from a torrent of water. She gave it up, concentrating instead on figuring out where she was and how she had gotten there. Gradually, the memory of her struggle to reach the car surfaced, but it was confused and dim. She opened her hands and rubbed her palms against the smooth surface of the sheets. She was back in the apartment; this was the bed. Her hand brushed against her hip, which was covered only by the thin cotton of her pajamas. Someone had changed her clothes.

  Massimo was repeating the word no, each time at a higher decibel; then he concluded with the time-honored “Basta, ci vediamo,” and snapped the telephone closed, evidently much vexed. Lucy’s hand had strayed over her hip and made the embarrassing discovery that someone had fitted a cumbersome sanitary pad inside her underpants. She kept her eyes tightly closed while a hot flush rose from her neck to her cheeks. Now Massimo and the stranger were talking animatedly. A word recurred between them, one Lucy recognized with a shudder: ospedale.

  If they wanted to put her in the hospital, she must be seriously ill. She might die there, helpless, unable to make herself understood amid uncaring strangers. The doctors would be unsympathetic and cold, the nurses impatient. She opened her eyes again, this time looking out through a shimmering screen of tears. “Please don’t take me to the ospedale,” she wailed.

  The men, startled, turned their attention upon her. The tears welled over her eyes and streaked down her cheeks, and she was too weak to brush them away. “I don’t think you should go,” Massimo said. “That’s what I’m telling this imposter.”

  “Tell him I’m feeling better,” she suggested.

  He pressed his lips together and raised his chin slightly in a gesture Lucy took to be promising. Then he plunged back into the argument with the stranger, who was, Lucy surmised, a doctor. For a while, the match was energetic and even, each boldly interrupting the other at steadily diminishing intervals, but gradually it became clear that Massimo had the upper hand. His volleys were sustained at greater length and higher volume, while the doctor relied heavily on shrugs, grimaces, and monosyllabic exclamations. A standoff was declared. The doctor left the room, huffy but resigned; Massimo turned to Lucy with the grim, self-satisfied expression of a victorious combatant. “He’s going for his bag,” he said. “He’ll be back to ask you some questions and take your blood pressure, et cetera.”

  Lucy nodded, thinking how odd et cetera sounded in conversation. “What’s wrong with me?” she asked.

  “This fool would be the last to know,” he replied. “He says if you take a turn for the worse, you will be worse, but if you become better, than you will certainly be better. I have told him, ‘This is not information.’ ”

  “I thought it might be food poisoning.”

  “It could be. He has also suggested colera.”

  “Cholera!” Lucy exclaimed. The doctor returned, his bag in hand, his stethoscope draped across his chest, proclaiming his status as a professional. He approached Lucy with an air of gravity and seriousness so transparently fake, it would not, she thought, have fooled a five-year-old child. He was a good-looking man with thick, straight black hair, dark expressive eyes, well dressed, and carefully groomed. As he took Lucy’s wrist to check her pulse, she noticed that his fingernails were perfectly shaped and buffed. He began his examination. Massimo stood beside him, translating his questions and her reluctant answers, for the questions were of the most personal nature: How long had she vomited? Did she vomit blood? Was there diarrhea, as well? Had her period started on time? Was she taking any medication? Did she experience pain while urinating? Massimo was mercifully matter-of-fact and appeared more interested in rendering precise and accurate translations than in the content of the inquiry. The doctor asked her to sit up so that he might listen to her lungs. When she tried to comply, she found that she hadn’t the strength to do it. Massimo fairly pushed the doctor out of his way, so ready was he to aid her. He lifted her by her shoulders and she leaned over his arm, taking the deep breaths the doctor requested while he pushed the cold stethoscope disk back and forth on her back. He muttered something Massimo didn’t bother to translate; then he busied himself shaking down a thermometer he took from his breast pocket.

  The revelation of her extreme debility had weakened the floodgate behind which a river of fresh tears roiled and swirled threateningly. Lucy struggled against it, but when, after he had lowered her gently down upon the pillows, Massimo laid his palm across her cheek and pushed back a straying lock of hair, she gave up the fight. Tears overflowed and, with them, a hard sob burst from her throat, so loud that the doctor looked up from his thermometer, his eyes still unfocused and his mouth set in his false professional frown. “I’m sorry,” she said through her tears. The Italian equivalent appeared and she added, “Mi dispiace.”

  Something that was not a smile but nevertheless a genuine expression of some feeling briefly animated the doctor’s features. But it passed quickly. He stuck the thermometer between her lips and addressed to Massimo a lengthy summation of his findings. Massimo’s reply was polite, controlled; having scored his point, he did not press his advantage. The doctor removed the thermometer, studied it seriously, and said, “No fever,” pronouncing each of the three short syllables with care and evident pride. Then, exchanging pleasantries with Massimo, he pocketed his thermometer, closed up his bag, and the two men went out through the kitchen. Lucy took advantage of the few moments alone to dry her eyes and counsel herself into a calmer state of mind. She ran her fingers through her hair; it felt lank, in need of a wash. When she examined her hands, she found the fingernails jagged, lined with dirt, and her palms were crisscrossed with scratches. On the pads of each thumb, scabs had formed, surrounded by inflamed red skin with dirt caked in the creases. She remembered waking in the car. It was daylight and the rain had stopped, but she had been unable even to take off her sodden sweatshirt before darkness had closed in on her again. Then nothing, until now.

  Massimo appeared in the doorway. She lifted her hand in greeting and asked, “Could I have some water?”

  He disappeared, then reappeared in a few moments carrying a small glass. It won’t be enough, she thought. She wanted a pitcherful. He pulled a chair up near the bed and handed her the glass, which she found remarkably heavy. “You must drink as much water as you can,” he said. “You are dehydrated.” He laid the stress charmingly on the penultimate syllable of the last word. “Later, a person will be coming from the hospital with—how do you say—a bag for injecting liquid.”

  “An IV,” Lucy said.

  “Ivy?” Massimo looked puzzled. “This is a plant.”

  “Just the letters—I, then V, for intravenous.”

  “Of course,” he said. Then he was quiet, watching her steadily while she gulped down the water. She held the glass out to him. “Thanks,” she said.

  He shrugged. It was nothing. It is all and always nothing to him, she thought. He did as he pleased. He took the glass, held it loosely between his knees. A flicker of a smile played at the corners of his mouth, as if he was considering some matter that fascinated and charmed him. “How did you manage to become so ill in two days?” he asked.

  “It was really something,” she said.

  “And why did you go outside?”

  Good question, Lucy thought. She remembered leaving the apartment, looking at the letter, then running down the stairs. “It was the dead partisan,” she said. Massimo gave her an uncomprehending look. “The ghost in DV’s book,” she added. “I saw him. I was following him. I thought he was you.”

  IN THE AFTERNOON, while the hosp
ital technician, a short, jolly man who sat at Lucy’s bedside, smiling benignly as the restorative fluid dripped into her arm, Massimo went away to make arrangements for conducting his various business affairs from the farmhouse. No sooner had he departed than Signora Panatella arrived, intoning what sounded like prayers as she unloaded provisions in the kitchen. Then, pouring out a litany of obeisances punctuated by sudden bursts of alarm, she came to Lucy’s bedside. What a terrible thing it was, the poor Signora Stark, look at her, so weak, so ill, what a catastrophe. Lucy smiled weakly at these effusions; this much Italian she understood. The signora and the technician fell into a conversation that both seemed to find enormously interesting, until they were interrupted by a clatter in the kitchen. Her son, the signora announced, bringing in a folding bed—un letto pieghevole—for the Signor Compitelli, che brava persona. She hastened to help him set it up in the sitting room. Lucy lay quietly, drifting in and out of sleep until the technician removed the needle from her arm, packed up his apparatus, and bid her “Arrivederla.” “Domani,” he promised, “lei starà meglio, non abbia paura.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” she repeated when he had gone and she was alone in the quiet house. But she was not afraid, not in the slightest. Like the spiny cactus that can survive for years waiting for the desert rains, her tissues had drunk in the electrolytic liquid greedily and she was refreshed and filled with optimism. She wanted to expend the new energy in some foolish, preposterous flowering. But when, longing for the sensual pleasure of a hot shower, she tried to get out of bed, she understood that her elation was premature. Her ankle would not support her weight. She might hobble across the room to the bathroom, but it was distinctly possible that she wouldn’t be able to get back. If Massimo returned and found her lying on the bathroom floor, he might decide she would be better off in the hospital. No, she concluded, she would have to wait. She lay back down, allowing her thoughts to wander peacefully over the events of the last few days. In the soft, cool light of the quiet room, it was impossible to entertain suspicions, to imagine that anyone here wished her ill. On the contrary, the alacrity with which they had taken on the matter of her illness suggested a natural openness and generosity one hardly expected to find among strangers. Massimo, especially Massimo, who had so taken charge of everything and who was now willing to stop the busy progress of his life until she was well enough to take up hers; how would she ever repay such kindness? As she was considering this problem, she heard his step on the stairs. She didn’t examine the possibility that the sudden racing sensation in her chest was something other than the pulse of convalescent gratitude, for he came immediately to her bedside. “You are awake,” he said, stating the obvious, as was his habit.

  “I’m feeling much better.”

  “Do you want anything?”

  “If you would help me to the bathroom,” she said. “I’d like to wash up a little.”

  “Can you walk? Shall I carry you?”

  “Let’s try walking.” He helped her from the bed and she leaned on his arm, taking small, careful steps. It took all her concentration to cross the room. When they arrived at the door, she released him and, holding on to the door frame, stepped inside. “I’m fine,” she said, for he looked doubtful.

  “I will be here,” he promised. She closed the door quietly behind her.

  She went to the sink and spent a moment gazing at her face; it had been so long since she had seen it. There were a few scratches near her right temple, feathering down across her cheekbones, but otherwise she looked the same, tired, pale, and sick. She turned on the water and began washing the dirt from the cuts on her hands. She was by nature fastidious, and it pleased her to attend to her personal hygiene without supervision. She wanted to take a shower, but the simple business of washing her face and hands and brushing her teeth left her so tired, she gave up the idea. There was nothing resembling a washcloth in the place, so she stripped off her clothes and did what she could with a bar of soap and the bidet. She disposed of the disagreeable pad, substituting a tampon from the supply she had brought with her. This seemed an enormous, cheering improvement. Then she put her pajamas back on, stashed the underpants in the string bag she kept for laundry, and opened the door. Massimo had pulled up a wooden chair and was sitting there, waiting patiently for her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He stood up without comment, offering his arm. He had undressed her, of course; she knew this. He had found her unconscious, delirious with fever, rain-soaked, filthy, bleeding, and he had somehow gotten her back into the apartment, changed her clothes, called the doctor. She imagined his struggles, his consternation and revulsion. She was torn between a desire to know the worst and a dread of hearing about it. She clung to his arm, concentrating on her shaky, pitiful little steps. The bed seemed a long way away. Eventually, she got there.

  She slept and woke, but now she was in a world she recognized, without terror or confusion. Massimo brought her broth with egg cooked in it and sat by her while she spooned it down. “That was good,” she said, handing him the empty bowl. “You are so kind to me.”

  “You must stop being grateful,” he said, taking the bowl away. She slid back down among the pillows, trying to understand this demand, but she could make no sense of it. Dazed with gratitude, she was ambushed by a deep and dreamless sleep.

  When she woke this time, she heard his voice from the kitchen speaking rapidly. The telephone agitates him, she thought, and that was as far as she got. Then he was sitting at the small table in her room, his back to her, working by lamplight, his various papers set out in stacks around him. The room, but for the insufficient light cast by the cheap lamp, was dark. He looked like a monk in some medieval cell, writing by candlelight. There was something of the hermit and the fanatic in his straight back and bowed head. She watched him without speaking and, watching him, drifted back into sleep.

  It was morning and she awoke feeling excited. She could hear him moving about in the kitchen. After a few minutes, he looked in and, finding her awake, came to attend. “What can I bring you?” he said. “You must be very hungry.”

  “I am,” she said. “But most of all I’d like to get out of this bed.”

  They agreed that she would try a trip to the kitchen, where he would prepare tea and bread for her. “It is too soon for coffee,” he cautioned. She got to the table with very little help and sat dipping bits of bread into a cup of milky tea while he stood at the counter talking angrily into his portable phone. Who was he talking to? Was it his wife, his employer? His phone was always next to him, and whenever it rang, he looked at it with unconcealed rage. It contained his ordinary life, called him back, and this made him angry. Did that mean, she speculated, that he wanted to get away from his ordinary life?

  He finished up abruptly and snapped the phone closed, looking down at her gloomily.

  “Trouble?” she asked.

  “Stupidity,” he said.

  “Is it difficult for you to stay away from Rome for so long?”

  His frown deepened into irritation. “I do what I want,” he said. “I am often away; it is my work.”

  “And am I your work now?”

  He considered the question; it appeared to interest him. “You are too sick to walk across the room,” he said. “How could I leave you?”

  “That’s true,” she said.

  “Do you want more food? More tea?”

  “No,” she said. “This was enough. What I’d like to do is wash my hair, but I don’t think I can stand long enough to do it.”

  “I will put a chair by the sink,” he said. “This is not a problem.”

  “I’m putting you to so much trouble.”

  He waved away her protest; it didn’t interest him. He was already absorbed in the project. He took a chair from the table and carried it into the bathroom, then came back for her. “Are you ready?” he asked. She got up and, holding his arm only lightly, made her way with small hopping steps. In the bathroom, she went ahead of h
im and lowered herself into the chair. It was obvious at once that the back was too high and it would be impossible for her to get her head anywhere near the sink. “Try turning it sideways,” she said, getting up. He agreed, shifted the chair, and she sat down again. By sliding her hips forward, she was able to rest her neck against the cool edge of the porcelain. “I’ll need a pot,” Massimo said. He went back to the kitchen, returning with a ceramic pitcher. “This will do,” he said. He put a towel in her lap, took the plastic bottle of shampoo from the niche in the tub, and handed it to her. “Hold that,” he said. Then he occupied himself with turning on the water, testing the temperature by holding his wrist in the stream.

  “The water in this house gets really hot,” Lucy warned.

  “Do not fear,” he replied. “I will not burn you.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she said.

  He filled the pitcher and poured the water, which was comfortably warm, slowly over her head. “How is that?” he asked. “Not too hot?”

  “It’s perfect,” she said. He was so far behind her that she had to open her eyes as wide as she could to see him. “This is wonderful.”

  He looked down at her, his mouth fixed in the patient, indulgent near smile that seemed to express the full complexity of his feeling for her. Then his eyes shifted to the pitcher, which was full. He poured the water over her head again, smoothing her hair back from her forehead with his palm. She closed her eyes. “This is paradise,” she said. He took the shampoo, squeezed a dab into his hand, and applied it to her hair, working up a lather with a gentle pressure that she found deeply soothing. She had expected him to make a poor job of it, to be awkward and impatient. “You do this so well,” she said. “You could do it for a living.” His fingers massaged her temples, rubbing smooth the last traces of anxiety.